March 03, 2008

Why Wrigley Field's landmark status should be preserved

The brouhaha over Sam Zell's plan to sell the naming rights to Wrigley Field obscures a far more significant issue: By arguing that the City of Chicago should "relax" landmark restrictions on the ballpark, proponents of a deal that would have a state agency buy and renovate the park would undermine decades of carefully structured protection for Chicago's architectural treasures.

The deal would almost surely embolden some property owners of landmark buildings throughout Chicago -- there are 259 individual landmarks and 49 landmark districts across the city, encompassing more than 9,000 properties -- to go back and challenge landmark status that the City Council had previously approved.

And that would wreak havoc with legal protections for the city's architectural and historical treasures that were set up 40 years ago to safeguard such structures as Louis Sullivan's former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store or Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House.

All this has been lost in the justifiable furor over Zell's plan to sell off Wrigley's name. But the issue is real, and landmarks preservation advocates are only now awakening to it.

It has been 21 years since the City Council took the unprecedented step of stripping of landmark status the McCarthy Building, an 1871 building of Italian Renaissance influence designed by John Mills Van Osdel, Chicago's first professional architect. The McCarthy, at the northeast corner of Washington and Dearborn Streets, was sacrificed in 1990 at the urging of developers who wanted it out of the way for a planned ramp to an underground garage on Block 37, the long-jinxed parcel across State Street from the old Marshall Field's store. Their plan for an office and retail complex on the parcel never materialized, meaning that the McCarthy was needlessly dispatched.

If Zell gets his way on Wrigley, more landmarks could be put in double jeopardy. Some owners of other landmarked properties would likely contact their aldermen and insist that they, too, deserve a rehearing. It might be an interior or a facade they don't like. Or a roofline they want to change. "People would say, 'we need to de-landmark our district,'" said Jim Peters, director of planning for Landmarks Illinois, the Chicago-based historic preservation advocacy group.

Zell, the real estate mogul who took control of Tribune Co. last year, wants to maximize profit and help pay down Tribune Co.'s staggering debt load by selling the Cubs and Wrigley Field separately. Under his plan, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority would buy and renovate the ballpark. But, naturally, there's a hitch.

Proponents of the deal -- notably, the authority's chairman, former Gov. Jim Thompson -- are arguing that the City of Chicago should relax the ballpark's landmark status to give them a freer hand in redevelopment.

Trust them, they say, they will respect Wrigley's cherished ambience.

But backers of Soldier Field's renovation offered similar assurances before carrying out their Klingon-meets-Parthenon revamp of the historic lakefront stadium -- a project that proved so jarring that the federal government in 2006 took the stadium off its list of National Historic Landmarks. In addition, the Friendly Confines have hardly been frozen in time since the City Council approved landmark status for Wrigley in 2004, despite Tribune Co.'s opposition.

The Cubs have been able to make numerous changes, especially the sensitively designed 2006 expansion that gave the ballpark 1,790 more bleacher seats. The expansion turned out as well as it did because landmark status guaranteed a careful review from the city landmarks staff, not just a rubber-stamp from the development-happy City Council.

Landmark status "has proven to be a workable solution," said Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city's Department of Planning and Development. "I don't understand the argument ... that [landmark status] is inflexible or that the Cubs aren't allowed to improve the ballpark. They've already proven they can do that."

Like any property owner, Zell has the right to request that landmark status be relaxed or even revoked. But he shouldn't get special treatment, especially not if it endangers more of Chicago's architectural gems. Mayor Richard M. Daley and his planners need to step up to the plate. For what's at stake goes far beyond the name Wrigley Field.